The present invention relates to retail sales stores, and more particularly to display apparatus for articles to be sold in such stores.
Retail sales stores traditionally have displays of the articles which are offered for sale. These displays are provided in a sales floor area where the articles are usually displayed, in a matter so as to attract the attention and interest of potential buyers. This sales floor area also includes a station where the customer pays for the purchase made, and a clerk wraps the purchase for the customer.
In order to attract customers into retail sales stores, it has been traditional to incorporate into the structure of such stores a "display window". A display window may take many forms, one well known form being an enclosure having a wall of transparent glass adjacent to a public walk, and possibly one or more additional transparent walls adjacent an entrance way into the store. There may also be provided one or more "back walls" separating the display window area from the sales floor area. In some instances, the display window has no back wall, and the transparent wall is a wall forming a boundary between the sales and display area of the store and the public walk.
Retail stores are located adjacent a public walk, which may be either a side walk, extending in front of a number of retail stores, or, in the case of large department stores, a public walk may be the sidewalk extending the length of the block in front of a department store, usually having display windows there along.
More recently, shopping malls have arisen in which the public walk in not a side walk bordering a street for vehicles, but is a walkway, usually of considerable extent, and often bounded along two generally parallel sides by a variety of retail stores. Such retail stores may have various configurations, as above discussed, including separate display windows and transparent glass walls forming part of the boundary between the retail store and the public walk.
It has been recognized that mobile display are useful for attracting attention, and mobile apparatus has been provided for displaying pictorial matter, merchandise and models. Wengel U.S. Pat. No. 3,221,666 discloses a display device of that nature wherein a carriage is caused to reciprocate between two locations, which may be within a store. Also of interest is Rasmussen U.S. Pat. No. 3,066,432, which provides a reciprocating indoor or outdoor advertising display device including trolleys moving in a path to and from a central display.
The aesthetic displays provided both in display windows of stores and near transparent walls of stores have not been as eye-catching as attractive and as likely to generate sales as is desirable. Where mobile displays have been utilized, they have only been placed wholly within a store, or have been placed outside a store, for advertising purposes.